Monday, February 20, 2017

PUBLIC SERVANTS AS PUBLIC LORDS

It is becoming progressively more pronounced, definitely
more manifest as time goes by. There are
more and more public servants in this
Country who think and speak like public lords, who act and behave as masters of
the general public. They do not only
consider themselves as omniscient but also think of themselves as omnipotent. They behave like master generals such that
they love and admire themselves so much that they come to believe that what
they say is always right, what they want they must get. Everybody else: Shut up! Stay still! Do as you are told!

These are public servants supposed to render public service
by working for the public welfare.
However, they conveniently forget that their big salaries, many fringe
benefits and all other largesse are all paid by the general public from birth
to death, through direct and indirect taxes people usually pay unknowingly,
non-deliberately. So it is that the
moment a child is born, this is taxed through his/her parents for using
electricity and water, for buying food and milk, not to mention the purchase of
clothes and soap, powder and medicine, etc.
etc.

Who dies and who lives, who is killed or allowed to live, who is terminated or
permitted to continue being, who is executed – electrocuted, hanged, shot – all
these are decided by the public lords. They
are even over and above God with the express and clear mandate for people not
to kill. They think and act as if they
gave the lives they want terminated, as if they authored the lives they decided
to take away. Saying it bluntly, they
want to be executioners from a distance when in the course of time, they
themselves can be executed for given misdeeds – when they are eventually out of
the reigning political party, when they are already out of power and might, when they are
divested of wealth and influence.

Again. Such political
potentates want to dictate who live and who die as if they are the ones who
give life and therefore have the right to take it away as well. True.
Their children come to life through them. But this is because they are already living
father/mothers themselves who thus but transmit to their children the life they
already have in themselves. The naked
truth is that they have not created any life at all – not even that of a
miserable flea. Yet they crave killing
others – who are usually the poor and miserable, considering that the Justice
System in the Country have long since exempted the powerful and the rich from
its scope. There is something weird worth
telling: said public servants thinking
and acting like petty gods can also be killed one way or another, by someone
somehow - unless they themselves
eventually die for whatever cause.

Recently, it was found out that a dog – yes, a dog! – was killed
for the sake of movie-making. When such
killing was made known, animal lovers were up in arms, these and those
individuals were blamed, the film industry was put to shame. Yes.
It was a dog that was killed. But
here come certain public officials wanting human beings killed! “Inhumanity
to man!” – this was long since said
for gross human cruelty. But the same
grim and gross reality is in the making – more for political subservience than
the right human value system. Never mind
what is right and wrong, what is virtuous or vicious. Mind what brings political influence from the
ultimate source of political power. Do
not mind the slaves but bow down and bow deep to the slave master.

Oscar Cruz

About The Blogger

Most Reverend Oscar V. Cruz, D.D. is the Archbishop-Emeritus of Lingayen-Dagupan. He is currently the Judicial Vicar of the National Tribunal of Appeals. He is a prolific writer, having published several dozen books mostly on judicial and moral matters. His most recent book is about the Social Doctrines of the Church. He also has a blog where he posts regularly. He is an avid coin collector and dabbles in woodworking art.